Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

individuos a menudo enfocados en su
vida cotidiana y filmados de manera
mágica por los camarógrafos del ONF,
artesanos de una edad de oro en la que
la invención y la experimentación no
estaban reñidas con cierto clasicismo.
La Mémoire des anges, que fue
estrenado en pantalla (festival de
Toronto, sala de arte y ensayo en
Montréal), también está disponible en
DVD. En esta versión, acompañan la
película una entrevista con el realizador
y el montador y la versión completa
de dos de las películas más explotadas
para el montaje. Lamentablemente,
falta un folleto ilustrativo que hubiera
podido ayudar a los espectadores
extranjeros a acercarse a esta película
extraordinaria.
Al contrario, la edición en DVD de
Of Time and the City (Terence Davies,
Reino Unido 2008) comprende un
hermoso librillo, además de «extras»
excepcionales, en especial una sesión
de preguntas y respuestas con Davies
después de una proyección de la
película y de la maravillosa Listen to
Britain (Jennings y McCallister, 1942),
una película que, según Davies, lo ha
influido mucho.
Of Time and the City es una película
sobre Liverpool, ciudad en la que
de Davies nació en 1945 y en la que
vivió hasta 1973. La película está
construida en un 80% con documentos
de archivo y acompañada de un
formidable comentario (poemas del
cineasta, de T.S. Eliot, etc.), leído por
Davies y punteado con extractos
sonoros de emisiones de BBC, que
guía al espectador a lo largo de este
viaje muy personal. Descubrimos
así el Liverpool de los tugurios que
fueron destruidos en los años 50 y 60
para ser reemplazados por torres de
departamentos que no tardarían en
convertirse a su vez en otros tantos
tugurios. Las imágenes suscitan en
Davies reflexiones sobre la vida y la
muerte, la monarquía y la religión,
el cine y su homosexualidad. Como
Bourdon cuando habla de Montréal,
Davies manifiesta un amor tangible
hacia los desconocidos que pueblan
las calles de Liverpool en busca de un
poco de felicidad.
Helsinki, ikuisesti / Helsinki, Forever (Peter
von Bagh, Finlandia 2008) es muy
distinta de las dos películas anteriores.
De todos modos, como Bourdon y
Davies, von Bagh habla de cambios,
The narration is not just von Bagh’s thoughts, but also like Davies’, comes
from literary sources; and, of course, the soundtracks of fiction films. Von
Bagh’s meditations on the archival and fiction footage are the most notable
element in the soundtrack. Right at the beginning, we are told “The Past is
more important than the Present”. Near the end of the film, we learn that “we
don’t live in the present alone. The past with all its memories, events, and
experiences is alive in us. Often the past is more powerful than the present.
For each colour image, there is a black-and-white image, like a shadowed
memory.”
The sentiment of Helsinki Forever is very much in the mood of the poem at
the head of this article. It also reminds me of something I once read: that
even if one has only lived one day in a place, one has changed that place
forever. A bit of an exaggeration, for sure, but one gets the point. If von
Bagh’s film is nominally about Helsinki, on another level it is surely about
the strange magic of the old image, in the sense mentioned by Susan
Sontag. And von Bagh makes that case right at the start of the film, with
an astonishing sequence. A large freighter breaks through the ice entering
the Helsinki harbour. Hundreds of people are around the ship, running with
it on the ice, witnessing its progress with not a care in the world as the ice
shatters. And most surreal of all, a motorcyclist passes over the ice in front
of the ship.
The closing sequence is also hypnotic. Troops are returning (from the 1918
war?). The camera is static. On one side of the frame is a line of soldiers
marching towards the camera. On the other side of the frame is a crowd
on the sidewalk. In between, civilians sandwiched and jostled between the
two also walk towards the camera. I find it hard to describe this long take.
It is a procession from the past. Or as the narration says, “History looks upon
us.”
I did, however, leave Helsinki Forever with the same feeling I had after La
Mémoire – wondering if there was sufficient context for non-dwellers.
The film moves back and forth in time, and I found the historical aspect
confusing, and also the geographical nature of Helsinki. This is prompted by
several references to the different areas of the city. But, as with La Mémoire,
I found the film a very rich experience, imaginatively made, and I was held
by it.
We should be glad that there are archives, because if these films on
Montréal, Liverpool, and Helsinki are any measure, the 1960s were the
decade of the wrecking ball. The London Nobody Knows, now available on
DVD, is a film from 1967 in which wrecking balls are bookends. The film
is based upon a book of that name from the 1950s written by Geoffrey
Fletcher, who takes us around parts of London forgotten in many cases
by everyone except their denizens. One could describe this film as being
a pre-archive archive film. The subject matter is that which is disappearing
from the city in the moments before it disappears. For example, a disused
theatre, the Bedford, “putrefying” as the narration puts it, was pulled down
two years after the film’s release. But the things disappearing are not just
old buildings, but views – for example, St. Paul’s Cathedral as it disappears
behind new construction. And people, too: the busker, or full-time street
entertainer. Sometimes, the film bemoans the passing of the old, but other
times it is happy about it. Slums will go and children will have a better life.
The film was written by Fletcher and directed by the little-known Norman
61 Journal of Film Preservation / 81 / 2009